Garden of Love

I have had the pleasure of seeing this film at a horror festival in Edinburgh. Garden of Love does not have a serious bone in its sick low-budget body. There is lots and lots of blood and gore, starting with the opening credits. The plot is extremely silly like everything else in this film. In fact you might say this film is a pastiche of gory films. At first this film seemed really bad, but it was so entertaining that the director must have been doing something right. Garden of Love definitely needs to be enjoyed in company (with like-minded people!).

A lot of people were laughing at the quality of the acting, but to be so funny throughout the film it had to be deliberately bad - SURELY?. The character playing Munster was my definite favourite and I would see the film just for his extremely camp performance. I am not sure that many actors could have made the awful lines quite so funny.

You may have gathered that Garden of Love won't be everyone's cup of tea but if you have a soft spot for bad taste gory films then see it, because it's wonderfully awful.

The only survivor of a horrific massacre when she was six years old, Rebecca Verlaine (Natacza Boon) has blocked out all memory of the terrible event, so she is understandably shocked when she begins to experience visions of her dead father and his mutilated pals, urging her to find those responsible for their deaths so that they can seek retribution.

Garden of Love? Don't worry… Olaf Ittenbach hasn't gone soft on us and made a romantic drama; despite the soppy sounding title, it's business as usual for the German splatter director, meaning extreme gore by the bucket-load, with heads squished, bodies torn asunder, guts ripped out, and blood splashed all over the place. The only problem is that, in order to get to the good stuff, one has to endure those other Ittenbach movie traits: iffy acting (English dialogue with a strong Teutonic twist), questionable direction, and uneven pacing—in this case the film takes an age to get going, explodes into violence for the film's standout scene, drags again, and then gets nice and bloody for the ending.

Still, fans of the director's other work should be well aware of what they're getting into and will no doubt hang on in there though the less eventful bits, safe in the knowledge that, when Ittenbach does open his bag of special effects, it is guaranteed to get very messy indeed.

The cover shots on the DVD looked very good and the director Olaf Ittenbach has quite a good reputation, so we decided to check this one out. Plus, the main character, German punk rock drummer and singer Bela B., is a very charismatic person and has shown a lot of good taste in horror movies and comics before, so I was very curious about that one.

First point, Bela B. is only in it for a few scenes and has nothing to do except for staring around. OK, he's playing an undead, they stare around and usually do no real acting, but he had shown that he can actually do good acting before, it would have been more interesting to see him in a "real" leading role . So it looked to me that his name was placed on the cover merely to promote the movie.

The other actors are absolutely ridiculous. Why do they all pretend that the story is set in Britain? The landscape, the interiors, everything is so German. Why not simply set the movie in Germany? Everything would be just fine, the story would have worked as well, and we wouldn't have wet our pants every time they tried to act "british". What took away a lot of the atmosphere.

The gore scenes are only a few, most of the time the movie spins around the investigation on Verlaine's murder. That'd be OK, if it only would have been a little bit more suspenseful.

The gory scenes are all set in darkness, so you cannot really see what's going on, you hear a lot of "painful" sounds instead. The make up of the zombies despite of that is very good, haven't seen that good looking dead people so far.

Overall, this movie is boring as hell, the acting is bad, the story is lame and a chilling atmosphere does not come up. Better stay away from that one and check out Ittenbach's "Beyond The Limits". I've seen that one before "Garden Of Love" and was very impressed about the great way of storytelling, the very good professional actors and the really really good atmosphere and setting.

Lots of gore in what I suppose is a fairly well done way? I don't mind that if it supports the story instead of just being there for the sake of it as here. Just kind of stupid when it's silly splatter for splatter's sake. The story itself is pretty silly really. The bones of it are ok, but it's not fleshed out. The acting is ok, but the dialogue is pretty insane at times. When a detective is relating the story of the bloody massacre at the back of everything his over the top dramatic dialogue - as opposed to the dry just the facts narration you would expect - is the best part of the movie actually because it's funny. On the whole the movie is pretty dumb and not worth the watch unless you just like watching people being ripped apart by ghosts. Like my title says If blood is all you love, then that's what you'll receive.

If you are a gore fanatic this is a must see! If you are one of those who likes to see why films have been banned then also watch this as it borders those boundaries too! I normally enjoy spooky films but this was a crossover between spooky – which would hook me straight into it, and zombie ripping gore – which I have to look through closed fingers to vaguely see what is going on…still I had to watch it as the eyes of those deceased and the way they stood out within the scary surroundings still kept Basically a girl (Rebecca) returns to the place of a massacre which she survived as a child, but having lost her memory, is none the wiser as to what has happened…all will make sense…or will it….not really sure … I loved the look of the dead people, especially their eyes, and the setting in which they are filmed (not just the house – but the background behind them when they talk to Rebecca in what looks like the light half way between heaven and hell, with creative particles of dust passing each body), but music was a bit naff I didn't really 'feel' for any of the characters which is normally the whole point of a film…so that was disappointing..no budding actors/actresses for the future in this one I am afraid If you like excessive violence then this is the one for you – if you want something 'moving' or 'spooky' don't' bother